Twenty-one Months (Lucy's Monthly Photo)

I think Lucy's vocabulary has doubled in the past month.  She is constantly surprising us by pointing to things and saying their names.

She has become very consistent with her "please" and "thank-yous".  It is so sweet.  I love it when she drags out, "thaaaaaat - you"



 One of her favorite games is sack of potatoes ("Tato!"), where she rolls down the back of the loveseat.



Among her favorite things of which to call out the name are:
- SLIDE!!
- STAIRS!!
- AIR PLANE!!
- WATER!!
- JACK!!



She's great at articulating when she's "duck!" (stuck). 

She is a delight.  Only 3 more months until her 2nd birthday!  Unbelievable.  

PS - I accidentally posted 2 of the "20-month" photos in the collage... so it looked like she was 22 months.  But she's not.  Just 21 months.  SO not worth the effort to go back and re-create that entire collage just to fix that one mistake.

Four Months (Elliot's Monthly Photo)

Golly, can you believe it's been 4 months?

This month we've enjoyed watching Elliot...

- Laughing and giggling
- Looking deeply into our souls (big fan of the eye contact)
- Play with toys... a little
- Pull out his pacifier
- Arch his back when trying to fasten him into the car-seat (okay, well, not so much enjoyed this one)
- Sit up really well in the Bumbo!


Like I've mentioned before, sleep during the night is an issue.  He's up a LOT right now.  He's gotten two colds already--Lucy was a year old before she got her first :(.  He's not eating solids yet, but he's nursing like a champ.  He takes a few naps during the day and cries a lot in the car (if he's not asleep).  But at least he'll go to sleep in the car.  That, I am thankful for.

Night Time Bonding With Elliot

So... we've been seeing a lot of Elliot lately.  He has decided that sleeping by yourself in a crib is for the birds.  He greets us with wriggling and screaming approximately every 1 1/2 hours at night.  Not that he's not cute then, too--but it is a problem. 



So much so that I've recently made some dietary changes to see if maybe that helps with his apparent stomach discomfort.  That's a big deal for me.  It has meant no more organic whole milk lattes in the morning (my current fav).  But I have been enjoying my almond milk lattes.  They are fabulous, too.  I add a little coconut cream to bring the fat content back up to what I'm used to.



Lucy has continued her paci thievery.  She is almost shameless in her thieving endeavors.  Also, everybody likes playing on our bed.  It has become the place to be.

We are enjoying getting Elliot to laugh.  He is so social!  He loves eye contact.  Daniel described him as "kind of intense" in that regard.  I would say more in this post, but my brain is so tired.  More soon.  Month-by-month to follow. 

Going Private

Did you know I can look at the search terms people use to find my blog?  Most people find my blog while searching for how-to's, like Lucy's 1-year old cake smash photo session.  But there are sometimes disconcerting search terms... like "crowning birth" or, the other day, "baby girl 1 year blonde". 

That last search term I mentioned above is the main reason I'll soon make this a private blog, available to anyone who wants to read it and whose email address I have.  Even if we're just acquaintances (or you're a friend of a friend... of a friend), I'm more than happy for you to follow my blog.  I just don't want "the creepos," as Daniel calls them, looking into our lives or for pictures of our children.

That said, if you would like to continue reading this blog -- please click on the "email" button over on the right, at the top of this page.  Tell me your email address, and (if we've never met) just a sentence or two about how you found my blog.  I'm happy to send you what you need to continue following the blog. 

Waiting For Easter

There's not a lot of tangible "stuff" for the significance of Easter.  Christmas has the nativity scene, lots of songs about Christ's birth, and even the giving of gifts -- reminiscent of the gifts given to Jesus by the wise men.  Easter has... bunnies... and eggs.  And chocolate.



But one thing I love on Easter is the outdoor sunrise service.  Gathering in the dark with other believers, singing hymns about how God conquered sin and death, and then hearing the resurrection story while the sun rises (son rises) - is a very meaningful aspect of the Easter holiday.  I really, really enjoy it. 



Lucy's still too young to grasp any of it, but she was loving these stickers the other day.



They were a gift from her Auntie Evelyn in Beaumont.  She kept calling them, "nice!"



And then re-arranging them all over the door.



Meanwhile, Elliot is working on his most-infuriating-during-the-night-but-most-endearing-during-the-day baby act.



Why does this child not sleep??  We are still feeding 3+ times/night.  It.  Is.  Brutal.



However, he is not screaming at us for hours on end every night, and that is a huge improvement over the situation when Lucy was this age.



 He is a keeper.  He is keeping us tired.  But he's a keeper.

Photo Shoot Highlights

I have taken lots of family photos and some individuals' photos over the past several weeks.  But rather than blog about each session, I've pulled out some of my favorites, along with lessons learned from each shoot.  Here goes!




Carrie's Individual Shoot:  my lens' auto-focus was malfunctioning, so there were only a handful of images with sharp focus, but this was one of them.  I love these windows, in the stairwell of my church.  Learning opportunities: always carry a second lens, should the first have some terrible issue like no-ability-to-focus!  Also, wider angle lens (18-35 mm) is better for full length portraits.  I love how bright and clean this image (above) feels.



The Culbriths Family Photo:  Learning points -- if you set the time of the shoot for sunrise, you should take into account whether that's sunrise before daylight savings kicks in or after. The sun was so high that many of my field photos came out with too much haze and harsh sunlight.  This one was good, but many, many others were unusable.



The haze in this one isn't bad, but I think I would like it better with less haze.  They were seated in the shade of the fence, and the sun was just rising over the fence.  If I could do this one again, I would get the sun behind me and still shoot them in the shade.  That would make the husband's features sharper.  Beautiful family though.



Learning points from this set-up:  a wider-angle lens (18-35mm) would have been better in this tight situation.  I would have liked to get more of the bed in these shots. 



Ford and Katie:  This shoot was meant to capture Katie's last moments with her only child Ford before his baby sister arrives on the scene.  Besides having a dead car battery and needing to wait for a jump before making it to the park (thus... the sun was already much higher in the sky than when I had planned these photos), I like how these came out.  I did a lot of them back-lit, since the sun was already above the horizon.  I greened up the grass and warmed up the white balance in PSE so it wouldn't look so wintery.  I love this one.



Nikkie's Family Shoot:  This session was totally last-minute, so I didn't have much time to think it through.  I had unrealistic expectations about getting baby to smile, which she wouldn't.  So that made it a rather stressful hour or so.  Also it was 4 PM on a bright, sunny day... and I couldn't come up with any really nice backgrounds or shady spots outside to photograph them in.  So... learning moment here is to plan photo shoots at sun down or else adjust expectations accordingly. 



Natalie's Family Shoot:  This went so much better than expected.  Right at sun down at a park with a big tree line - the lighting was easy peasy.  Having learned some lessons from previous family shoots, I brought a basket full of toys and threw a ball to Esra between each picture.  That kept him looking at me and smiling in anticipation of the ball.  Learning moment : tell Dad to put his foot down.  Wouldn't change anything else about it, though.



Remember how baby Shepherd would not sleep last time I tried to photograph him?  Well, check this out - despite the cool breeze, he was out like a light, and I managed to get (albeit clothed) a few sleepy shots of him on his blanket.  Score!



Maybe a teensy bit out of focus, but otherwise I love this photo with the soft sun light hitting her hair and the top of his head.



Baby Cora is 3 months old (I photo-shopped mom's hand out of the above photo) and not a big tummy-timer.  I keep encountering this problem, it feels like.  Note to self: don't use white bunny ears on a white background.



It was super overcast and dark outside on this day, and I really didn't have enough light to shoot without flash.  I ended up bouncing my speedlight all over the place and changing my settings every few minutes.  Learning moment: learn how to use your flash (I'm currently taking a course).

Hannah's Recital:  Oh gosh.  Where to begin.  This was a huge, dark room with very harsh overhead lighting directly above Hannah.  Between that and the super dark wood walls and super light wood floor, it was really challenging to photograph in this room.  I should have used my flash but was afraid to fire it directly at Hannah and had nothing to bounce it off of.  So I took all my photos without the flash and then attempted to edit some of the harsh shadows out of them.  Those are particularly apparent on some of the images of her playing (above).



Although my original intention was to get bright, clean, airy images -- I do love the drama in the one above and several others.  It actually captures the feel of the room nicely.

So that's some of what I've been learning and doing these past several weeks!

Beaumont 2

We finished our trip today and made it safely home, thankfully with everyone in much better spirits than during our trip there.



Do you remember the cradle that has been in Joe's family for 100+ years?  I snapped a photo of Elliot in it this weekend.  Can you imagine a brother and sister that look more different??

Yesterday Sadie planned an early Easter egg hunt, with each egg filled with gold fish and/or "bewies" (grapes).



She loved it!  It didn't take long for her to figure out what was inside the eggs and that the eggs were something precious to be hunted, eagerly. 



Matchy matchy buddies.



Before the egg hunt, we played outside some.  Pop was building a deer blind.  Do you know many 80-something-year olds who are still doing woodwork?



We also had a fun outdoor "tea party" with water.



She loves pouring the "tea".  



Despite the epic tantrums every 10 minutes or so, Lucy really enjoyed playing with bubbles and having a tea party. 



Lucy's mood sort of deteriorated during our trip.  But Elliot was so easy going!  It was so nice.



I'm in a facebook photography group, and the theme this week was "green" - so here was my sumission (taken in Sadie and Joe's yard).



Happy Thursday!

Beaumont

The bad news: the children were horrendous passengers in the car on the way to Beaumont.  The good news:  I did not crash the car, despite the screaming  cacophony of agony blaring at me from the back seats. 

Enough about that.  We made it safely to Beaumont, and I'm grateful for that. 




Sadie and Pop are good, good friends of ours, and I love visiting them.  Though Lucy's been extra clingy the past couple months, she's beginning to warm up to both of them.  She's still saying, "Mommy--hold you!" a LOT, but she let Sadie hold her a few times today, and that was progress.  And actually, when Pop walked in the door at dinner time, she walked up to him and held her arms up.  She even called Sadie, "Mimi" today when she got out of the car.  "Mimi" is the name of Lucy's actual grandma, my mom. 



We visited Evelyn yesterday.  She is a very sweet 92-year-old woman who still lives alone and loves Justin Beiber.  She is a wonderful hostess, always preparing coffee and sweets whenever we come over.  But yesterday we just had tea.



She has this lush little atrium in the middle of her house that is so lovely. 



And she was overjoyed to hold Elliot.  She kept saying, "Oh, it's been so long since I got to hold a little baby!!"  It was really nice to see her so happy, holding him. 



I tried to get Lucy to take a picture on her lap, but what can I say... she was melting down, and life was miserable for all of us during the few minutes I tried to make it work.  I finally wised up and put the camera away, and we headed back to the house for much needed nap time.



I mentioned before that there's this great play room upstairs.  This room was designed and decorated 26 years ago, and it feels like time has stood still when you are in it.  Everything is so well kept, you would never know it's been this way for so long. 




Did I mention Lucy's obsession with pacifiers?

 

She is a sneaky little one, always with her eye on Elliot's... just waiting for her moment to snatch it.

 

And then she looks at me with this huge grin, sort of waiting to see what I'm going to do about it.



And I'm very inconsistent.  Sometimes I make her give it back (or give it to me).  Other times I'm otherwise engaged and leave her to her thievery.  I bet more consistency on my part would help with this issue. 



He is so stinkin' cute.  Love those ears.  And those eyes.
 

Today we went to the park and the library.

 

Can you believe the difference in 6 months?  Crazy.

 

I was impressed with this library.  It was so nice.



We met up with a friend, Sharon, and she and Sadie had a nice chat while Lucy played with the toys.

 

Then home again for naps and play time.



We miss Daniel this week!  But we are doing alright.  We are in good company. 

Tomorrow, the drive home again.  Pray hard for us, please.